Merionethshire
- Eleanor Conlon
- 4 days ago
- 9 min read
Where is Merionethshire?
In our episode about Merionethshire we talked about lots of interesting places and things, so here are some pictures and links to find out more.
Blaennau Ffestiniog
The former ‘slate capital of the world’ has, in the last few years, become one of North Wales’s most innovative activity centres. It's also one of the six distinct areas of the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales which has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It joins three other World Heritage Sites in Wales and places worldwide such as the Taj Mahal, Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, the Pyramids, Grand Canyon and Great Barrier Reef.
Those screes of broken slate that tumble down steep-sided mountains are now the province of mountain bikers and zip line riders, while underground the historic caverns are home to the world’s largest subterranean trampoline and yet more zip line action.
Former ‘slate capital of the world’ with a strange, compelling beauty, abundant in cultural tourism. Screes of broken slate tumble down steep-sided mountains, mixing with Snowdonia’s natural grandeur. Glimpse into Blaenau’s unique history at the Llechwedd, one of Wales’s most successful tourist attractions where you can experience the deep mine tour, take an off road tour on the quarry explorer or have a go at slate splitting.
Dolgellau Gold Belt
The Dolgellau Gold-belt runs, arclike, southward from near Trawsfynydd, around the eastern and southern flanks of the Harlech Horst (formerly Dome) and out to the Cardigan Bay coast near Fairbourne. Throughout this tract, middle and upper Cambrian sedimentary rocks and associated intrusions comprise the solid geology.
They are unconformably overlain, to the SE, by subaerially erupted basic island arc-type volcanics (the Rhobell Volcanic Group) of lowermost Ordovician age. The Horst itself is a fault-bounded block over which further, older, Cambrian sedimentary rocks outcrop. These overlay a sequence of island-arc volcanics of postulated late Precambrian age, proved in a borehole. The nature of the basement remains unknown.Mesothermal gold-quartz lodes are common throughout the Gold-belt, but have only produced significant gold at certain localities.
The total recorded output of the Gold-belt is ca. 4 tonnes of gold, mostly being produced by two mines, Clogau and Gwynfynydd, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Intermittent exploration and production have continued to the present day, with the last large-scale mining activity being at Gwynfynydd mine in the 1983-1998 period.
Portmeirion
In 1925, Welsh architect Clough Williams-Ellis acquired the site which was to become Portmeirion. He had been searching for a suitable site for his proposed ideal village for several years and when he heard that the Aber Iâ estate near Penrhyndeudraeth was for sale, he did not hesitate to make an offer.
He wanted to show how a naturally beautiful location could be developed without spoiling it, and that one could actually enhance the natural background through sympathetic development. The Aber Iâ estate had everything he had hoped for as a site for his architectural experiment: steep cliffs overlooking a wide sandy estuary, woods, streams and a nucleus of old buildings.
When Williams-Ellis acquired the land in 1925 he wrote, "a neglected wilderness - long abandoned by those romantics who had realised the unique appeal and possibilities of this favoured promontory but who had been carried away by their grandiose landscaping...into sorrowful bankruptcy." Clough immediately changed the name from Aber Iâ (Glacial Estuary) to Portmeirion; Port because of the coastal location and Meirion as this is Welsh for Merioneth, the county in which it lay.
His first job was to extend and convert the old house on the shore into a grand hotel. The concept of a tightly grouped coastal village had already formed in Clough's mind some years before he found the perfect site and he had quite a well-defined vision for the village from the outset.
Portmeirion was built in two stages: from 1925 to 1939 the site was 'pegged-out' and its most distinctive buildings were erected. From 1954-76 he filled in the details. The second period was typically classical or Palladian in style in contrast to the Arts and Crafts style of his earlier work. Several buildings were salvaged from demolition sites, giving rise to Clough's description of the place as "a home for fallen buildings".
"An architect has strange pleasures," Clough wrote in 1924. "He will lie awake listening to the storm in the night and think how the rain is beating on his roofs, he will see the sun return and will think that it was for just such sunshine that his shadow-throwing mouldings were made."
Bryn Cader Faner
The Bryn Cader Faner is a Bronze Age round cairn which lies to the east of the small hamlet of Talsarnau in the Ardudwy area of Gwynedd in Wales.
The diameter is 8.7 metres (29 ft) and there are 18 thin jagged pillars which jut upwards from the low cairn.It is thought to date back to the late third millennium BC. The site was disturbed by 19th-century treasure hunters, who left a hole in the centre, indicating the position of a cist or a grave.
Originally there may have been about 30 pillars, each some 2 metres (7 ft) long. However, before World War 2, the British Army used the site for gunnery practice. The Army damaged many of the stones on the east side.
Bryn Cader Faner is thought to mean 'the hill with the chair with the flag' or 'the hill of the throne with the flag'.
Tomen y Mur
"The mound of the wall", possibly a Norman motte raised inside the angle of a 1st.c. Roman station. Mur Castle, Tomen Y Mur, belongs to the old Celtic mythology; to the Romans, whose most lonely western outpost on the military highroad between Caerhun and Pennal it was; to the princes of Gwynedd and Norman kings, all of whom occupied the quiet inconspicuous pudding-shaped hill top mound. It was a dreary site, disliked most heartily by the soldiers and hardly preferable to a posting on Hadrian's Wall. In addition to the usual military buildings, parade ground and bath house, the troops were provided with an amphitheater for sports and games to relieve their tedium.
Princes of Cunedda's line moved in when the cohorts departed, and about the time of the Conquest they defended their courts by earthworks like those of a motte-and-bailey castle; this the Normans took over in the XIIth C.
In later days a mound was built in the centre of the fort by William Rufus, but his occupation, like that of the Romans, was of short duration, and he was glad to get home in safety from the terrible Gruffydd ap Cynan. Henry I is also said to have penetrated thus far, and to have fled just as precipitately.
Harlech Castle
None of Edward I’s mighty coastal fortresses has a more spectacular setting
Castell Harlech crowns a sheer rocky crag overlooking the dunes far below – waiting in vain for the tide to turn and the distant sea to lap at its feet once again.
No further drama is really required but, just in case, the rugged peaks of Eryri (Snowdonia) rise as a backdrop. Against fierce competition from Conwy, Caernarfon and Beaumaris, this is probably the most spectacular setting for any of Edward I’s castles in North Wales. All four are designated as a World Heritage Site.
Harlech was completed from ground to battlements in just seven years under the guidance of gifted architect Master James of St George. Its classic ‘walls within walls’ design makes the most of daunting natural defences.
Even when completely cut off by the rebellion of Madog ap Llewelyn the castle held out – thanks to the ‘Way from the Sea’. This path of 108 steps rising steeply up the rock face allowed the besieged defenders to be fed and watered by ship.
Harlech is easier to conquer today. An incredible ‘floating’ footbridge allows you to enter this great castle as Master James intended – for the first time in 600 years.
Castell y Bere
Castell y Bere was a remote outpost on Llywelyn’s southern frontier, but it was vital to his security. It guarded his cattle range, protected the homeland of Gwynedd and dominated the neighbouring lordship of Meirionydd.
Llywelyn ab Iorwerth was Prince; but cattle were king! In medieval Wales cattle were as good as currency. This location was so important that Llywelyn was prepared to take it from his own son Gruffudd in 1221, so that he could begin building a castle.
After Llywelyn died his successors continued to use it. It was taken by English king Edward I, in 1283. He made alterations to the castle and hoped an English frontier town would grow here. It never happened. The English abandoned the site during an uprising against their rule in 1294.
Today Castell y Bere is as wild and remote as it was when Llywelyn first arrived. It stretches along the summit of a rocky outcrop on the eastern side of the Dysynni valley. The picturesque and remote location makes it difficult to appreciate that this sprawling stronghold once controlled an important routeway running up from the coast at Tywyn northwards through the mountains towards Dolgellau and protected the southern border of Gwynedd. Distinctive features at Castell y Bere include the characteristic Welsh apsidal — or elongated D-shaped plan of the south tower. In scale, it may be compared to examples of similar design at Welsh castles of Ewloe and Carndochan, where they served as keeps.
Another distinctively unusual feature for a Welsh castle of the 1220s is to be found in the highly elaborate defended entrance with its ditches and two gate-towers, each with its own drawbridge and probably portcullis. Such a sophisticated entrance cannot be matched in any other Welsh castle. Indeed, even by the standards of English fortification, it would have been technologically advanced for the early 1220s.
Cymer Abbey
Cistercian monks were more than religious men. Worldly Cistercians were also pioneering sheep farmers and some of the first rural entrepreneurs. Their network of abbeys included Cymer, idyllically set at the mouth of the Mawddach Estuary.
Founded in 1198, it was one of their lesser settlements, suffering greatly during the conflicts between Wales and England in the 13th century. Nonetheless, substantial remains survive from this simple abbey church.
Peniarth Manuscripts
The Peniarth Manuscripts, also known as the Hengwrt–Peniarth Manuscripts, are a collection of medieval Welsh manuscripts now held by the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. The collection was originally assembled by Robert Vaughan (c. 1592–1667) of Hengwrt, Merionethshire. During the 19th century it was held in Peniarth Mansion, Llanegryn.
In 1859 William Watkin Edward Wynne inherited the collection. In 1898 it was sold to Sir John Williams, who had himself acquired a large private library. Subsequently a plan to establish a National Library of Wales emerged. When it did so, Williams promised that he would donate the collection to the library on condition that it would be based in Aberystwyth. This condition was met, and Sir John duly donated the collection to the National Library.
The collection contains some of the oldest and most important Welsh manuscripts in existence. For example it includes the Black Book of Carmarthen, Book of Taliesin and White Book of Rhydderch (containing the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, the Three Welsh Romances and other tales) and a number of other ancient manuscripts, including early texts of the Cyfraith Hywel and by Beirdd yr Uchelwyr (the Poets of the Nobility). The manuscripts in other languages include two Latin manuscripts of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae and an early illuminated version of the Canterbury Tales known as the Hengwrt Chaucer.
Vaux Passional
The Vaux Passional (Peniarth 482D) is an illuminated manuscript from the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century. With thirty-four large miniatures in the style of the Flemish School, it is one of the most elaborately decorated manuscripts in the collection of the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.
It retains an original binding of wooden boards covered in velvet from the early sixteenth century.The volume contains the book plate of Watkin Williams of Penbedw.
Bala Lake (Llyn Tegid)
Llyn Tegid, also known as Bala Lake or Lake Bala in English, is a large freshwater glacial lake in Gwynedd, Wales. The River Dee, which has its source on the slopes of Dduallt in the mountains of Snowdonia, feeds the 3.7-by-0.5-mile (5.95 km × 0.80 km) lake. It was the largest natural body of water in Wales even before its level was raised by Thomas Telford to provide water for the Ellesmere Canal (later Llangollen Canal).
The town of Bala, which was once an important centre for the North Wales woollen trade, is located on the north-eastern end of the lake. The 3-mile (4.8 km) narrow-gauge Bala Lake Railway, between the town and Llanuwchllyn (whose name means "The Llan above ['uwch'] the lake ['llyn']"), runs along the lake's south-eastern shore using a section of former trackbed from the former Ruabon–Barmouth line.
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